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Friday, June 29, 2018

By a Hair: Bearded Lady Project Challenges Stereotypes

She has a
youthful, makeup-free face, a soft, lilting voice, and absolutely no facial
hair.

And that sets
her apart from most of her paleontology colleagues.

“If you go and
you open up a popular science magazine, you flip on the T.V., and there’s a paleontology show, most of the
time, what you’re gonna see is someone who’s pretty large, pretty scruffy
looking, pretty dirty, and totally male,” Currano said. “And that’s not me.”

Currano, a
paleontologist at the University of Wyoming, is one of just 16 percent of U.S.
college geoscience faculty members who are female. Female PhDs in the field
make an average of $10,000 less per year than their male counterparts. And the
media is saturated with images of scientists who are burly, rugged, and
decidedly male.

Once, when
talking shop with a few of her female co-workers, Currano blurted out a
possible solution to the pressures that come with being a woman in a
male-dominated field: maybe it would be easier if she came to work with a
beard.

That accidental
revelation launched a larger idea: The Bearded
Lady Project. The photo series and documentary were produced by Currano, director Lexi Jamieson Marsh, and fine-art photographer Kelsey Vance. They
feature top geoscientists who happen to be women, sporting faux facial hair to
fit the common misconception of how a scientist should look.

“When we’re being blasted with very negative portrayals of
female scientists or no portrayals at
all of femalescientists having these photos to come back to, I think is going
to be very important,” Currano said.